Aground Read online

  “But,” she said, “didn’t Ruiz say they knew about the steel’s effect? And that Ives had checked the error before they left?”

  “Sure,” Ingram replied. “On one heading. That’s what gave it away—I mean, that he’d already disappeared even before they sailed. It couldn’t have been Ives who did that. He’d have known better. Admittedly, he could have got pretty rusty in fifteen years, and the compasses on those planes were probably gyros, but nobody who’d ever studied navigation could know that little about magnetic compasses. They’re basic, like the circulation of the blood to the study of medicine. And you don’t adjust one by finding out what the error is on one heading and then applying that same correction all the way around. It’s different in every quadrant, so you have to check it in every quadrant. Actually, on some headings, what they were doing was multiplying the error instead of correcting it.”

  “Then I guess there’s no doubt,” she said. “But if somebody’s been killed, why do you suppose the police didn’t say anything about it?”

  “They don’t always tell you everything they know. And maybe they don’t know, or don’t have any reason yet to connect it with the theft of the Dragoon.”

  “Yes, that’s possible.” She flipped her cigarette away in the darkness. “If we could surprise Ruiz and get that gun away from him while Morrison’s over here, could we make it ashore in the raft?”

  “Not to Florida. With luck we might get back across the Bank to Andros, but I don’t know whether we’d make it across the island. However, with Ruiz off our backs and Morrison stuck over here, I think I could refloat the schooner. At least, we could get on the phone and call for help.”

  “Morrison might get back aboard, if it took very long.”

  “No. He couldn’t swim it with a gun.”

  “Would that thing he carries around with him shoot from here to the boat?”

  “I think it’ll probably carry that far, but it wouldn’t be very accurate. However, there’s another angle on that. Once we start bringing those cases of ammunition over, he could use these rifles. We wouldn’t be able to move on deck except at night. But there’s something I wanted to ask you. You say Ruiz was sleeping on deck—that wouldn’t be way up forward, would it?”

  “Yes. Right in the bow. Why?”

  He nodded grimly. “I thought so. Before we spin any more gossamer dreams about what we’re going to do after we fool Ruiz, we’d better take up the question of how.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He told her about the idea of swimming out and trying to get up the bobstay. “He saw that was the only place I could possibly get aboard. So I’d have to step right over him. Dripping wet.”

  “I know it won’t be easy,” she agreed. “As I said, I watched him all day, and he never once let me get behind him while you were alongside with the raft. But maybe he will now that I’m just a stupid drunk, and obviously harmless.”

  “I can’t let you do it,” Ingram protested. “Ruiz is no punk hoodlum. He’s tough all the way through, and he’s got reflexes like a cat.”

  “Let’s don’t waste time worrying about me. I’ll be behind him, and I don’t think he’d shoot me, anyway. It’s you we’ve got to think about. If he breaks loose and gets that gun before you reach him, he’ll kill you, so unless you’re sure you can make it, don’t try. But we’ve got to have a signal. How about this? I’ll be calling you Herman, and referring to him as Pancho—you know, endearing myself to everybody—but when you hear the name Oliver, get ready to come aboard.”

  “All right.” They had to try for it sometime, and the sooner the better. It had to be when Morrison was out of the way. He looked at the blur of her face just before him in the soft tropic night. “I owe you an apology,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “For what I thought.”

  “Oh, really?” she said indifferently. It was clear she didn’t care what he thought. “If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll wander off to the other end of our little sandpile and see if I can get some sleep.”

  “No,” he said, getting up abruptly. “You stay here and use the blanket and pillow.” Ignoring her protests, he strode off in the night. Fifty yards away he stretched out on the sand with his head pillowed on an arm and stared up at the black infinity of space while he finished his cigar. He felt like a pompous and overweening fool who’d just been thoroughly deflated, and he was certain she’d done it deliberately. Well, there was no law said you had to stick your neck out and get it stepped on. He threw away the cigar and surrendered himself to the weariness that assailed him. When he awoke, her face was just above him in the gray beginning of dawn, and she was shaking his shoulder. The blanket was spread over him. He threw it aside and sat up, grinding a hand across his face.

  “I think you had a nightmare,” she said. “I heard you cry out, and you were trembling as if you were cold, so I put the blanket over you. Then you began to beat at the ground with your hands.”

  “It was just a bad dream,” he said.

  “Oh-oh. Somebody’s coming from the boat.”

  He turned his head and saw the raft approaching across the flat, dark mirror of the sea. “Remember the signal,” she said softly.

  “Oliver. But be sure you’re behind him.”

  “I will be. Good luck.” She turned away and went over to pick up her purse by the stack of crated rifles, and was combing her hair when Ruiz grounded the raft in the shallows and motioned to her. Ingram watched her wade out, a bedraggled but indomitable blonde girl with a black eye and torn calypso pants, and heard the brassy idiocy of her greeting. “Hi, Pancho. I feel like hell, I theeeenk. And if I ever catch the lousy parrot that slept in my mouth . . .” They moved off toward the Dragoon.

  Ingram stood up, pushing his leg straight against the stiffened tendons and aware of the soreness in every muscle of his body. You’re too old and beat-up for this kind of duty, he told himself. He wondered why she had put the blanket over him, but dismissed the speculation as futile; he’d never figure her out. Walking out into the water, he scooped up some and scrubbed his face, and noted professionally that the tide appeared to be at a standstill. It was slack high water. Ruiz came back with the raft. He got in and pulled out toward the Dragoon, and as they came alongside he studied her critically. She was still hard and fast aground, not even completely upright yet. Solid-looking wooden boxes with metal straps were lined up along the port rail and stacked in the cockpit. She was gray and ghostlike in the dim light of early morning, and everything was saturated with dew. Morrison stood on the crates in the cockpit, the inevitable BAR slung in his arm and an expression of driving impatience on his face. It was clear he was in an ugly mood. “How about it?” he asked, as Ingram stepped aboard.

  “A long way to go yet,” Ingram said.

  “All right, here’s the ammo. Twenty-five boxes of it, around two hundred pounds to a box. Ruiz and I carried it up while you were flaked out over there on your fat with Mama-san. Probably have to take ‘em over one at a time. Ruiz’ll put a rope on ‘em and help lower ‘em into the raft so you don’t drop any.”

  “Do we get anything to eat?” Ingram asked.

  “There’s a mug of coffee and some Spam. That’s all anybody’s going to get till this boat’s unloaded.”

  Rae Osborne was seated aft by the binnacle smoking a cigarette. “How about breaking out the rum?” she asked sulkily. “I think I’ve got crabgrass on my teeth.”

  Morrison whirled on her. “You lay off the sauce or we’ll tie you up. We got enough to do without dodging some drunk staggering around in the way. You can have some coffee.”

  She sniffed. “Coffee! Big deal.”

  “And you better remember to stay clear of Ruiz. He’s fussy about people coming up behind him, and he’ll bend your teeth.”

  “Ruiz and what other wet-back? Don’t forget I own this boat, little man. And I could buy you in sets, for book-ends.”

  Ruiz stared through and beyond her without any expressio
n at all. Morrison grunted contemptuously, and turned away. She was doing fine, Ingram thought, as he sipped his coffee; then he remembered the night in Nassau and wondered just how much of it was acting. She baffled him. He got permission to visit the head, with Ruiz following him with the Colt, and then rowed Morrison over to the sand spit. The labor began. When he came alongside each time, Ruiz had one of the boxes balanced at the edge of the deck with a line around it and would stand back in the cockpit to lower away while Ingram settled it onto the bottom of the raft. They were brutally heavy for their size, and he wondered if they would move all of them before the fabric bottom gave way. At the other end, however, Morrison hoisted them to his shoulder seemingly without effort and strode across the flat toward dry ground. The sun rose, and grew hot. The tide began to ebb. And still Ruiz’ guard was impregnable.

  Ingram could see Rae Osborne moving about the after deck apparently at will when he was away from the schooner, but the moment he came alongside Ruiz motioned her astern and away from him. She cajoled, whined, threatened, and grew abusive, trying to get a drink, and all of it availed her nothing. A light breeze sprang up from the southeast around nine a.m., but in half an hour it died away and the heat grew unbearable as the sun attacked them from all directions, reflected from a sea as smooth as polished steel. They stopped for an hour and a half during the peak of the ebb, but were back at it by eleven. By 12:30 the tide had passed low slack and was beginning to flood again. They had unloaded sixteen of the boxes of ammunition, a little over a ton and a half. And still she’d had no chance at Ruiz. They had the rum put away where she couldn’t find it, and feigning drunkenness was obviously out of the question.

  On the next trip, however, he caught a change in the pattern. Maybe she had solved it. She was below when he came alongside, and didn’t return to the deck until after he was loaded and pulling away. She moved listlessly, as though she were ill. He delivered the box to Morrison and rowed back. This time she sat quietly in the after end of the cockpit until the loading operation was completed and he was clear of the schooner’s side. Then she arose, slightly doubled over, and hurried toward the ladder.

  “Again?” Ruiz asked.

  “So you must have bad water on here,” she snapped.

  Ruiz shrugged. “Water? How would you know?” But she was gone down the ladder.

  All right, Ingram thought; I read you loud and clear. But it probably wouldn’t be the next trip; she’d build it up more subtly than that. The next did go by without incident. It was after one now, and the flood was quickening. When he came alongside on the return, butterflies moved softly inside his stomach; one mistake, or one tiny lag in reaction time, and he might be dead within the next few minutes. She was seated on the deck with her feet on the cockpit cushions, aft on the opposite side. He gave her only a passing glance and caught the lifeline stanchion. The box of ammunition was balanced on the edge of the deck just level with his shoulder, and Ruiz had hold of the line.

  She leaned forward slightly. “Don’t stand between me and that ladder, Oliver.”

  Ruiz gave her an indifferent glance as she stood up. Ingram reached for the box, walked it over the edge of the scupper, and let Ruiz take the strain on the line just as she started up the deck beyond him. He saw her turn and fall, and at the precise instant she landed on Ruiz’ shoulders he gave a savage yank on the line. The two of them fell forward onto the cushions on the low side of the cockpit, just in front of him. The box of ammunition struck the edge of the raft and almost capsized it as it plummeted into the water. He had hold of the lifeline and was lunging upward then, throwing a turn of the raft’s painter around the lifeline as he went over it onto the deck. Ruiz had pushed to his feet, but Rae Osborne was still fast to his back with her arms locked around his waist and over the flat slab of the automatic. The Latin clawed at her hands, broke her grip, and pulled the gun free just as Ingram crashed into them. Rae Osborne was whirled free of the tangle and slammed back against the cushions on the starboard side as the two men went down locked together in the bottom of the cockpit. Ingram could feel the hard weight of the gun between their bodies, and got a hand around the muzzle.

  Not a word had been uttered, and there was no sound except the sibilant scrape of canvas shoes against the deck, and the meaty impacts of flesh against flesh and of furious bodies against wood, and the tortured gasps of breathing. Ruiz was incredibly strong for a man of his slender build, but not strong enough. Ingram got the other hand around his wrist, locked it in a paralyzing grip, and slowly forced the gun to his right until it was out from between their bodies. He twisted savagely at the muzzle, and tore it from Ruiz’ grasp. Pushing back, he sat up with his back against the binnacle, switched the gun end for end in his hand, and leveled it at Ruiz’ face as he fought for breath. He clicked off the safety, which Ruiz had never had a chance to do.

  “Go below,” he said to Rae Osborne. “Bring up some of that line they used for lashings.”

  She went down the ladder. Ruiz sat up and slid backward, his eyes never leaving the gun. It was intensely silent for a moment as they both came to rest, and Ingram was conscious for the first time that there had been no firing from Morrison. He must have seen it. Then it occurred to him that with the Dragoon’s port list and their sitting in the cockpit they were out of sight now, and even if the big man had had time to go back and pick up the BAR he was too much the pro to shoot when there was nothing to shoot at.

  “When you come back,” he called to Rae Osborne, “don’t stand up. Crawl back to where I am.”

  “Right, Skipper. I’ve got some rope now.”

  Ruiz said softly, “You’re not going to tie me up.”

  Ingram centered the gun on his chest. “But I am, amigo.”

  “I won’t go back. Go ahead and shoot.”

  “Who’d you kill?”

  Ruiz made no reply.

  “Was it Ives?”

  Ruiz still said nothing.

  “Where did you hide the tubes you took out of the radiophone?”

  “We threw them over the side,” Ruiz said. Rae Osborne’s face appeared then in the companion hatch and she crawled out into the cockpit with the line in her hand. “Don’t move,” Ingram warned Ruiz as she slid past him. I’ll have to beat him up before I can tie him, he thought, and looked forward to it with distaste. But it was the only way; she couldn’t hold him still with the gun. He wouldn’t pay any attention to it.

  Rae Osborne handed him the line and started to turn to face Ruiz. Then she gasped, and cried out, “The raft!”

  Ingram’s eyes shifted to the left. The painter was gone from the wire lifeline. At the same instant, Ruiz leaped to his feet, got one foot up on deck, and dived over the starboard side, all in one continuous motion. Ingram cursed and sprang up. He could see him under the water, swimming straight out from the schooner. The raft was some thirty or forty yards away, being carried eastward on the flooding tide. It was easy to see what had happened. Either his own lunge when he’d come aboard or the impact of the falling case of ammunition had propelled it aft far enough for the tide to carry it under the stern, and the single turn he’d been able to take with the painter hadn’t held it. He tracked Ruiz with the gun. He was coming up now, less than fifteen yards away.

  His head broke the surface. He shook water from his face and opened his eyes, and for a fraction of a second that seemed like an hour to Ingram they looked squarely at each other across the sights of the gun. Ingram tried to pull the trigger. Then he sighed gently and let his arm drop. Ruiz turned and began to swim, not even bothering to dive again. He knew I couldn’t do it, Ingram thought. Rae Osborne was beside him now, and she cried out, “We can’t let him get it!”

  Bitterly, without speaking, Ingram held out the gun to her. She pushed it away, and said, “No, I mean shoot the raft.”

  He raised the gun, and shot, but he was low. The bullet made a little splash six or eight feet short of the raft. He raised the muzzle slightly, but before he could fire again, t
wo small geysers erupted in the water just under them and something slammed into the deckhouse off to their left with a shower of splinters. “Down!” Ingram snapped. They dropped back into the cockpit. The professional combat team was in action now; Morrison was covering Ruiz with the BAR.

  Ingram raised his head to peer over the edge of the deck. The raft was at least seventy-five yards away now; the chances of his hitting anything at that distance with a handgun were too dim to justify wasting the ammunition. A couple of holes wouldn’t disable it, anyway; they’d find a way to plug them. He looked to the left, and could see Morrison. He was about two hundred yards away, wading out on the flat south and west of the sand spit to get as near the schooner as possible and to try to intercept the raft if Ruiz failed to catch it. Ingram estimated the line of its drift and saw he wasn’t going to make it unless he dropped the gun and swam; the water was nearly up to his chest now, and was growing deeper. Hope flared for a moment, and then died. It didn’t matter; Ruiz was overhauling it.

  Morrison was ignoring them now that Ruiz no longer needed cover. They stood up and watched bitterly as the latter caught the raft and pulled himself aboard. Beyond him, Morrison brandished the BAR above his head in jubilation.

  “Do you suppose they’ll try to come aboard right now?” Rae asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ingram said. “They might wait till dark if they know for sure we can’t get the telephone working. . . .” His voice trailed off then as he stared out at the raft. Ruiz had picked up the oars, but he wasn’t pulling toward Morrison. He was headed due south, away from both the schooner and the sand spit.

  “What is it?” Rae Osborne asked, puzzled. “Where’s he going?”

  “Over the hill,” Ingram said softly. He shook his head. A hundred miles—with no compass, and no water.

  Morrison was plunging ahead, beckoning violently with his arm. Then he stopped and leveled the BAR. Ruiz kept right on rowing. They saw the burst chew up the surface behind him and come upward across the raft, and then his body shook and jumped under the impact and he fell sideways and rolled over with his head and shoulders in the water. The collapsing raft spun slowly around in spreading pink and drifted away to the eastward on the tide. Rae Osborne made a retching sound and turned away.